This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
All this week we'll be taking you behind the scenes at Novelicious with guest posts from Team Novelicious. Here we have the second ever Novelicious team member and deputy editor Debs Carr.
Happy birthday Novelicious!
I can’t believe this fantastic site is five years old already. My role for Novelicious.com is dealing with requests for reviews, interviews, writing room posts, etc for Alternative Thursdays. I keep a spreadsheet showing all the posts I’ve set up going back over the years – can you tell my day job is as a company/trust administrator – and correspond with PR people and publishers co-ordinating future posts. They send me requests for reviews, interviews or other slots that they’d like to be included in and I let them know if their book is something that I feel suits the Alternative Thursday slot and what we need for each post in the way of jpegs, word count, and such. I arrange for review copies of the books to be sent to a team of reviewers. I ask for the reviews to reach me by Saturday, so that I can set up the posts for the following Thursday. Jennifer Joyce is my main reviewer and sends me weekly reviews. I also have a team of reviewers whose posts I alternate – we post two reviews each Thursday – and Amanda Keats sends me a piece if she’s been to a party, book-signing, or any special book-related occasion.
One of my most exciting Novelicious experiences was taking part in the judging of the Novelicious Undiscovered Competition and reading hundreds of entries, some of whom were amazingly talented. Over the years we’ve celebrated with each other when members of the team have been signed up by agents, received publishing deals or self-published their own novels.
I was always an avid Novelicious fan, never missing posts, looking forward to reviews of books that inevitably ended up being added to my ‘to be read’ pile. One day, Kirsty posted that she was looking for new reviewers to join her team; I nervously applied. When I joined, it was a much smaller team and I read and reviewed up to three books each week. This sounds more impressive than it actually is – they were Little Black Dress books and I loved reading them. It was exhilarating to receive books in the post each week and I sent my reviews to Kirsty, who posted them onto the site. After a while, I posted my own reviews and then those for Cesca Major. I was delighted when Kirsty asked if I’d like to look after the posts that didn’t cover Chick Lit books, and so began my role as Deputy Editor of the site and Editor of Alternative Thursdays.
I’ve met some fabulous authors through the site and we’re invited to amazing parties and launches, although I don’t usually manage to attend any because I would have to fly over from Jersey, but I will one of these days. My favourite posts are the book deal moments and seeing authors’ writing rooms. I always want to know how an author became published, and I’m very nosy and enjoy being able to peak into peoples’ writing spaces.
I love being part of this friendly, supportive and fun team.